Corona: Setting a higher standard

This morning we announced more funding! When I think about how much we did with our original funding 3 years ago, I’m extremely excited about what we’re going to be doing in the upcoming year.

With that in mind, I just wanted to share some quick thoughts about where Corona is headed.

First off, there are leaders and there are followers. Lately, there’s been a lot of attention from competitors and this just shows, thanks to you all, that Corona is now a market leader. While the world imitates where we’ve been, we’ll be focusing on where the world is going.

From the beginning, we’ve believed you (every one of you) should be able to create apps. And that with Corona, you can create the next hit app. After all these years, we are still the only mobile platform that can cater to every developer — from indies to studios and from teenagers to octogenarians.

In addition, we are constantly iterating and improving. Building a platform is excruciatingly difficult because it’s not enough to build, you also have to adapt quickly. For example, when iOS 6 came out, we worked immediately to workaround Apple bugs like GameCenter orientation. Or when the iPhone 5 was released, we were the only platform out there that offered any guidance on how to make your apps work.

Only now — over a month later — am I seeing our competitors starting to adjust to these new realities. During that time, the industry has moved on, and we’re the only ones who have kept up. When iOS 6.1 Beta 1 came out, we were the only ones who made device builds available for it — just a day after Apple released it!

Looking ahead, we’re super excited about all the cool stuff coming down the pipeline. Here’s just a small preview:

We’ve been holding a lot of these kinds of things close to our chest, because we hold ourselves to a higher standard. Promising the world with half-baked, alpha-quality platforms is not how you build trust. We understand that. We think you deserve more. And that’s why we’re always aiming higher.

Every evening, I drive by the Computer History Museum on the way home, and I think about the kinds of things people will talk about in decades to come. I truly believe that the work we — the team here and you all — do together will earn its place in the pantheon of software.

Chrissays:

That really sounds promising.
I’ve had an eye on the other platforms, but am still using Corona. Why? Because it’s fast, reliable and stable.
Now with the new graphics engine, shaders, AR, .. this would keep me for another long time with corona.
Of course there is plenty what could and should be done what others already did, but nevertheless i think Corona is ahead (at least when it comes to games).

Andreassays:

As much as I love new features it would be good if Coronalabs would more concentrate on problems/bugs with the SDK that gets our apps rejected, e.g. the problem with the detection of “silentMode” – my game was just rejected by Samsung (which is bad, because I build up a very nice connection with these guys, they love the game and wanted to promote it internationally in all 10 languages I support).

I’m very happy with Corona for iOS, but on the Android side there’s still a lot of housekeeping to do to make it stable. And yes, I know that it is an almost impossible task with all the new Android devices (Samsung releases them by the minute) and OS flavors for Kindle & NOOK. But when you claim to offer multi platform development made easy you need to put some more effort in there.

Maybe you should take the time to update your Angry-Birds-Demo with a the latest stuff you’re offering and I’m using (like Twitter SSO, FB SSO, web popup to Samsung App Store for showing apps and rating them, Video, etc.) and try to get the app as a Coronalabs-Tech-Demo accepted by e.g. Samsung.

They will tell you that Coronalabs SDK does not respect the “silent mode” of the device, that the video (normal mp4) won’t run on some devices, that the Twitter SSO popup window does not respect the screen dimensions on some devices (when using “zoomEven” and dynamic resolution) and the web popup to the Samsung App Store on some devices crashes the app.

I have the impression that Coronalabs never put an complex app into e.g. the Samsung App Store. Am I right?

And again: I love the SDK and you’re doing great things. But please concentrate more on the final goal, getting the apps into the stores -> all problems connected with the SDK causing a rejection by Apple, Samsung, Amazon, etc. should get THE HIGHEST PRIORITY and should be fixed immediately. Because these problems hurt and destroy complex marketing plans. Have a look at the trailer for the game, as stated at the end we were aiming for a November release on all important App Stores in 10 languages:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciQgYVgT0gk&hd=1

We did lots of preparations, contacted lots of review sites internationally, got nice previews all over the world and now we cannot release for Samsung, Amazon release might only work for Kindle devices and not the other Android devices and everything is in jeopardy. Not a good feeling.

My suggestion:

Add a “Rejected apps: put all rejections here” forum. And give your talented developers the time to check this often and to solve these problems asap.

Thanks for reading this, maybe I got carried away a bit, but my suggestion stands. Rejections need to be handled with utmost priority.

Best,
Andreas (from Germany, very far away, but feeling very close to Coronalabs

Waltersays:

Thanks for letting us know about the Samsung store guidelines/rejections. While we’ve paid pretty close attention to the other stores (iOS, Amazon, Nook), this is the first we have heard of issues on Samsung’s app store. We’ll investigate more once the release goes out.

Andreassays:

I post something with some criticism in it, the post gets moderated and then it is published, no censorship at all.

And of course it is bad that our game cannot be released on all platforms at the same time, but on the sunny side we still can release with Samsung Apps when you sorted out the problems causing the rejections.

I’d like to see Corona become a bit cheaper, or offer better services away from development.

A lot of Corona’s competition is free, so things like assistance with monetizing, etc, or a price cut would be appreciated. Don’t forget, we iOS developers have to pay an additional $100 to Apple, and many of us are indy devs.

For indy developers, it’s hard to do everything. CoronaLabs has more funding, so they should be able to put together a small team of people to create ways to actually help us outside of programming / design, instead of just resource links. Create an automated way to do some of the heavy lifting for us as far as marketing, monetizing, and coming together with other developers/designers.

Agreed! Tutorials are the best way of getting people to try your platform out, and you’ve made many improvements since back when Jonathan Beebe wasn’t even working for Corona yet and making these tutorials. Updates on these would be great. =)

Marcsays:

can you name which are the competitors you are referring to in this article?
I’d like to compare and have a better understanding of what makes Corona the leader in its field before I invest my time and money in the framework.

Marcsays:

It doesn’t take too much to have a quick Google on who is a competitor – off the tip of my head you’re probably looking at the likes of Gideros, MOAI, Love2D, Cocos…

It’s really up to individuals to calculate the risks/benefits of each framework – surely you can’t expect Corona Labs’ CEO to explain the strengths/weaknesses of their platform compared to their competitors?

Marcsays:

> surely you can’t expect Corona Labs’ CEO to explain the strengths/weaknesses of their platform compared to their competitors?

I think you are wrong in your assumption, it’s called “positioning” and there is a difference between what I found with a google search (that would be “my” assumptions only) and what the Ceo of CoronaLabs could refer as “competitors”.
This is all in the benefit of CoronaLabs to explain the value of their offering.

Isn’t that just some Gideros users opinions on a community forum – sorry haven’t got the time to read it fully yet, but it just seems to be a forum post – pretty sure there’s probably something like that on the Corona forums.

Marcsays:

This is a Corona & Gideros user who tries to make a fair comparison between both frameworks.
He has good things to say about both solutions, and his post has been “liked” by the Gideros’ development team.
Also I’ve seen several times the dev team saying good things about their competitors, acknowledging their advantages and weaknesses, to help devs make their own decision.
They don’t make it like there is no competition and forbid to name *the others*.

It’s just that I wanted to see the same thing done here. Anyway it won’t happen here
Thanks for taking the time, Chris and good luck with your own projects & super sushi.

Cheers Mark – I’m pretty sure that if you wanted to open up a discussion in the forums, people with experience of the frameworks would be more then willing to share their experiences.

I’ve only used MOAI and Gideros extremely briefly – I enjoy their extendibility, however I find Corona’s ability to get things up and running quickly very beneficial.

I guess as developers we shouldn’t be too partisan and view these frameworks for what they are: tools to use – each have their own strengths and weaknesses. I’m eagerly awaiting to see what Platino looks like, for example.

Personally I don’t like the fandom that comes with the frameworks and the sinister motives that devs seem to insist are happening behind the scenes. Let’s just stick clear of subjective opinions and enjoy each framework for which they offer.

I hope you also fix bugs. I had postponed my game for nearly 6 months due to a bug, but then I had to finally submit because iTunes Connect would otherwise delete my saved draft. (The bug was wider text displays suddenly turning white — just on the device, not simulator, which is always nasty to test.)